Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023. This bill amends the Higher Education Support Act of 2003 to implement priority recommendations of the Australian Universities Accord interim report released by the Minister for Education on 19 July 2023.

On the bill before the House today, I want to begin by acknowledging the work of the Minister for Education and his commitment to engaging strongly on this issue. The minister has proven himself to be a very passionate advocate of education and the opportunities that it affords. I want to thank him for the work that he's doing in his portfolio. As a former teacher myself, I also have a very strong interest in education and the power of opportunity it presents. I want to commend the work of the minister, especially for his consultative approach and his commitment to engaging broadly with his colleagues, with the education sector, with business and with the public.

This has been a wide-reaching, wide-ranging consultation. This broad based commitment to the issue is reflected by the make-up of the accord team, comprised of pre-eminent Australians with enormous experience across our universities in business and in public policy. It is, of course, bipartisan in composition, as it also has the membership of the Hon. Fiona Nash and the Hon. Jenny Macklin AC. Both were known to us in this place for the tremendous amount of work they have done and continue to do.

The Albanese government is committed to opening the door of opportunity for more Australians to go to university. I welcome the government's commitment not only to that but to take immediate action on this front. Part of this immediate action means acting on the priority actions of the interim report. There are five recommendations in total. Firstly:

that we create more university study hubs—not only in the regions but also in our outer suburbs;

It's quite a coincidence that just recently that my constituent, Aarif, who lives in Craigieburn, in the outer areas of the electorate of Calwell—Craigieburn, along with many other peri-urban suburbs, is a fast-growing suburb—reminded me of calls for the provision for a university in Melbourne's northern suburbs. This has been a point of discussion for some time now. I have long maintained, as have many of my local constituents and our local council, that there is a strong case for a university hub in Melbourne's north-western suburbs. As with all considerations, demand is a critical factor, as Melbourne's northern suburbs have indeed grown and continue to grow exponentially. It's something that I support strongly. I'm joined in my support by my local community and look forward to the opportunity of being able to progress such a vision of a university hub in Melbourne's northern suburbs.

Secondly, the report calls for the scrapping of the '50 per cent pass rule' and requires:

…better reporting on how students are progressing;

Thirdly:

that we extend the demand-driven funding currently provided to Indigenous students from regional and remote areas to cover all Indigenous students;

Fourthly:

that we provide funding certainty during the accord process by extending the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024 and 2025, with funding arrangements that prioritise support for equity students; and

And fifthly:

that we work with state and territory governments, through National Cabinet, to improve university governance.

The government has confirmed that it will implement each of the interim recommendations. The first two recommendations require legislative amendment, which this bill provides by amending the higher education support amendment to extend the current demand driven funding for regional and remote First Nations students to all First Nations undergraduate students studying bachelor or bachelor honours level courses from 2024, to remove the pass rate requirements for students to remain eligible for Commonwealth assistance and to introduce new requirements on universities and other providers to support students in successfully completing their studies.

Education is a fundamental pillar of equality in our society. It is, as many have said before me, an enabler of a life lived with purpose and contribution. Quite often, university students in my electorate have spoken to me about the additional pressures they face in having to work to meet the additional demands that come with being students and being involved in higher education. Often this coincides with a time in their life when responsibilities and commitments have taken hold. They have worked very hard to secure their place in a higher education institution, but they are new to some of the financial demands that come with being a young adult, such as having to work to financially support their education. In many cases, this can extract a price at the expense of education results for a period of time.

The balance between the need to work and commitment to education can often be challenged, and the fundamental equality test is challenged with the 50 per cent pass rule. That rule means that, currently, students are required to pass at least 50 per cent of the units of study they undertake to continue eligibility for Commonwealth assistance. The pass rate is assessed after they have completed eight units in a bachelor degree or higher, or four units in a shorter course. Currently, students who fail more than half lose eligibility for Commonwealth assistance.

The pass rate requirements were originally introduced in January 2022 by the former coalition government as part of its Job-ready Graduates program, to dissuade students from continuing in courses they were deemed to be not academically suited for. However, the practical effect of these measures has been overly punitive for students. The impact of the pass rate requirements has disproportionately affected students from First Nations, low-socioeconomic status and other underrepresented or educationally disadvantaged cohorts. More than 13,000 students at 27 universities have already been affected by the 50 per cent rule. Removal of the rule has been called for by universities right across the country—universities like the University of Adelaide, Monash University, the University of Technology Sydney, the University of the Sunshine Coast, the University of New England, Queensland University of Technology and Western Sydney University. The bottom line is that we should be helping students succeed, not forcing them to quit, especially those who have worked very hard to win a place at an institute of higher learning.

This government is putting responsible education governance back into the sector. The bill introduces requirements on universities and other providers to have policies in place to help students successfully complete their studies. Under these policies, universities and other providers will be required to demonstrate how they will identify students who are struggling and how they will connect those students with support services to help them. The addition of new student support requirements will place formal obligations on providers to support students in successfully completing the units of study in which they are enrolled. This will require higher education providers to demonstrate how they will support their students who are experiencing academic difficulties, particularly students who are at risk of not successfully completing their studies. It will serve to ensure that universities are not just merely transactional—accepting fees and leaving students to incur debts—but will bring about a situation where universities and providers have an active responsibility towards their students, with processes that identify students who need help and that assess a student's academic and non-academic suitability for continuing study, particularly where they have triggered an alert.

Importantly, these measures are expected to contain policies which connect students to support and identify students who are not engaging with support before their census date and to provide sufficient non-academic supports for students, such as financial assistance, housing information and mental health supports. This is important because many students struggle with financial commitments and with personal issues often related to health issues, relationship issues and other factors which are non-academic issues but which do impact on the student's academic performance.

The bill also means that appropriate crisis and critical-harm response arrangements are made, and it provides access to trained academic development advisors who can help a student identify and understand what might be holding them back and come up with the appropriate response so as to assist that student. It also ensures that academic and non-academic support is age and culturally appropriate, including specific arrangements for Indigenous students. Proactively, the bill is obliged to offer 'special circumstances' arrangements where a provider is aware of a significant life event that would be affecting a particular student. It provides access to targeted individual literacy, numeracy and other academic supports. It provides provider-driven and evidence-based additional support such as peer support. It provides targeted in-course support from academic staff such as check-ins and flexibility on assessment arrangements.

Ignoring the realities of the complexities affecting young people who are studying in higher education does not help improve our education outcomes, nor does it improve the integrity of our higher education system. What it does serve to do is entrench inequality and the skewed accessibility indicators against those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and makes places of higher learning more often than not spaces for the children of more financially and socially endowed families. This is why we need policies that reflect the practical realities on the ground and serve to deliver for everyday Australians—policies that go beyond rhetoric and actually afford people real opportunities. Many of those people are the young people in my electorate.

This Labor government offers Australians—and young Australians in particular—an opportunity of a fresh start. This Labor government has seized opportunities, and in particular has seized upon Australia's educational opportunities and the jobs of the future. It's estimated that by 2050 approximately 55 per cent of all jobs will require a higher-education qualification. Why are these details behind Labor's policy framework particularly important? Because it speaks to the need of the many in my electorate who find obstacle after obstacle thrown in their way—especially the young, who are at a disadvantage when trying to tackle the demands of work and study.

At a time when this country is confronting a massive skills shortage, this amendment is critical to addressing opportunity in Australia and the potential of education as a key driver of Australia's future prosperity. The damaging years of the coalition government was not a good time for the people of my community, especially when the previous government reduced the availability of relevant pathways for new skills for young people, and destroyed opportunities for people looking to reskill or even upskill in emerging industries. The measures found in this bill build on the government's election commitment to deliver up to 20,000 Commonwealth-supported places and fee-free TAFE.

It's not just about the damage done to the university sector under the previous government—if we want a contrast between the leading role this government plays in securing the future of our higher-education sector and that of those opposite, we must remember that billions were ripped out of TAFE and vocational training that offered pathways and opportunities for work. The previous government not only presided over 140,000 fewer apprenticeships than when they first came to government; they actually compounded the problems by ripping away the pathways that could address the crisis that they helped create. To that end, I commend the bill to the House.

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